Pi-Consulting

Time was when an advertising claim seemed inadequate if it did not contain a comparative, or better yet a superlative. “Persil washes whiter” was a typical offering from the detergent sector, much imitated and eventually much parodied. In France for instance Bic disposable razors used to claim that “Bic rase plus blanc”, i.e. their product “shaved whiter”. The point was that successful products were the ones that found ways of establishing, or at least claiming, superiority over their competitors, thus giving their consumers “permission to believe” (ah, the 1970s!) that they were doing the right thing by adopting the brand in question.

Things change. A while ago this blog ventured the opinion that, with Me Me Me in advertising giving way to Me Too, “marketers now know that selling on the basis of that elusive holy grail, a meaningful product superiority, is a luxury they will never have again. In most product sectors, brand choice based on consumer perceptions, values and attitudes is all that is left to work with”.

We based this admittedly rather sweeping statement on personal observations from a decade or two in market research, plus assorted moans and groans from a scratch sample of marketer acquaintances. The thesis seemed to be supported by a Financial Times analysis of marketing trends, which noted that a vast majority of consumer products were tacitly admitting that product parity was the best they could hope for to base their claims on. “The real task today” said the FT,” is creating demand based on consumer knowledge”.

The Pi blog loves getting mail, and on this occasion an immediate rejoinder came in from one of the industry’s most magisterial observers, himself a market researcher of longer standing than your columnist. “With all due respect”, he wrote, “This is utterly wrong. Have you never heard of Google, Intel, Starbucks, Wal-Mart? And Japanese cars that don’t break down?” His contention was that product superiority claims based on genuine innovation were still the foundation stone of success. “Product advantage”, he said, “is key. The very opposite of the FT thesis is the correct one”.

As the laconic baccy-chewing character actors in old Westerns used to say, “Man has a point”. Even now a product like Google can still move from nowhere to market dominance just by being better, or by the audacity of its innovation. Intel, for instance, stepped to the front by relentlessly driving up personal computers’ memory capacity ahead of the public’s perception of what they would actually need all that memory for. In Wal-Mart’s case it was relentlessly driving down prices by putting an armlock on manufacturers just as low-cost outsourced production was coming on-stream. As to Starbucks, the idea of asking people to pay six dollars for a cup of coffee was fanciful to say the least until Starbucks came along and made it a reality.

The trouble is, parity constantly snaps at the heels of superiority. Trailblazers make it easier for those who come behind them, unless they can establish invincible levels of market share before the competition figures out what’s happening. In consumer electronics for instance, a manufacturer selling his new product based on higher levels of gigabytes, megapixels or free weekend minutes will find he has a maximum of three to six months (sometimes only weeks) before everyone else is claiming the same thing or better. The recent spate of savage price-cutting on high-definition TV sets and other entertainment gizmos during the 2006 Christmas selling season seems to bear this out.

It may be that the supremacists and the shoulder-shruggers are talking about two different things. A few meaningful product superiority stories can, and do, co-exist with a growing predominance of brands who may never be able to make a “washes whiter” claim ever again. Can one blended Scotch whisky, to take an example, seriously claim to be superior in some way to a rival product? If not, the two brands’ marketing directors may feel tempted to slink off into the misty world where Brand Heritages are matched up and paired off with Consumer Values. They are always at liberty to try trusty old chestnuts like “No Other Brand Gives You More”, that reliable standby of brands locked in a quality stalemate. When that stops working, then it’s time to find something in your customers’ nature that can be invoked to get them to like your brand more than the other guy’s.

It seems safe to predict that henceforth such cases will outnumber the true innovators (and therefore legitimate superiority claimers) by several orders of magnitude. Hence the growing fuss over consumer insight research. If your product does not taste better, accelerate faster or cure life-threatening diseases, then you either have to change it (rather tricky) or look to identifiable particularities about your consumer constituency, its foibles, prejudices and beliefs, and latch onto those as a way of distinguishing your product from a competitor’s. Attitude research is in many fields elbowing aside the boffins with their test tubes.

If proof is needed that innovation and “attitude-bonding” both have a place in modern marketing, it is worth remembering that real product innovation does not happen in a vacuum. It seems to be widely acknowledged that understanding a brand’s consumers is as essential for product innovation as it is for sustaining parity products. You need to understand the mindset of the people you are innovating for.

So, you’re looking for an attitude-linked formula for establishing product difference? Me too.